Former EA Redwood/Visceral Games vice president Glen Schofield, whose new studio is called Sledgehammer Games, has revealed via twitter that his studio is working on a new Call of Duty game, marking the eighth in the series and the third currently in development. This is in addition to developer Treyarch, who will be releasing Call of Duty: Black Ops in November, and Infinity Ward, which has been committed to Modern Warfare 3.

According to Schofield, the Sledgehammer game will utilize true stories of actual servicemen, although the actual names and locations will be changed. In an earlier tweet, Schofield also crowed that his company's CoD will truly shine in the sound department, claiming "Audio will be better than what we did on Dead Space". For those of you who don't remember, EA Redwood made a really big deal about the sound design for Dead Space, and as anyone who played the game can tell you, they weren't just blowing smoke - the sound design truly enhanced the gameplay experience.

It is interesting that Sledgehammer and Activision would choose to co-opt real life soldiers' stories for use in a fictional video game. The widespread controversy that arose around Six Days in Fallujah, a game that was going to be set around an actual battle fought by US soldiers in 2004, caused developer Atomic Games to cancel production on the title. Granted, Schofield and Sledgehammer have a bit more clout in the gaming industry than Atomic did, but it wasn't exactly the industry's outcry that caused Fallujah to be cut. It was really more that once the mainstream media got hold of the story, the game's days were numbered (no pun intended). Whether or not the media at large picks up on Sledgehammer's decision to use real life scenarios remains to be seen. The larger question becomes: if the media does pick up on it, will Activision have the courage to stand behind their franchise. Of course it could also be the case that Sledgehammer will only use elements of soldiers' lives, rather than recreate actual battles. In that case, it would be more like Modern Warfare than Six Days.

[Source]